


The Juxtaposition of You and Me

by fallofthereichenbach



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Asexuality, High School, Homophobia, M/M, pansexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 18:51:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5795866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallofthereichenbach/pseuds/fallofthereichenbach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Juxtaposition<br/>[noun]<br/>The fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect."</p>
<p>Arthur Pendragon is on the football team. He is a Disruptive Student, hated by teachers but loved by (some) students. Everybody knows who he is.</p>
<p>Merlin Emrys is part of the Advanced Science Club. He keeps his head down in lessons, and works as hard as he needs to get what he wants. Being invisible is one of his talents.</p>
<p>Seems simple enough, doesn't it? But when these two lives keep on colliding, who knows what will be uncovered?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Juxtaposition of You and Me

**Author's Note:**

> In which I have a hella cool name for a story/fic and have to think of a plot around it
> 
> Sorry if this sucks (which it probably will lmao)

**Meeting #1: A crowded corridor ******

It was Merlin Emrys' first day of a new high school. The first day was always the worst, he knew that; but he was always unprepared when it came around. That morning, he had spent ten minutes looking in a mirror and wishing he didn't exist. And yet, here he was - fourteen years old, black hair, blue eyes, and a 5'11 bundle of worry.

This would be interesting, at the very least.

By now, Merlin should really be used to this. This was his fifth school in the last two years. His mother kept having to relocate them in the hopes of finding a stable job. At least this time he got to start in September at the beginning of the school year. Maybe this time he'd be able to blend in more.

Or maybe not.

Merlin could hear them before he rounded the corner. The students. No, not just any students either. The football team, the cheerleaders, the ones at the very top of the educational food chain. A smile almost formed on his lips. It was the same in every school. The same groups, the same people in each group, the same words... When were the people going to change? But a smile here could cost Merlin everything, so he kept it hidden.

The hall, when he reached it, was crowded with students waiting outside classes and looking for their lockers. Thousands of conversations flew around the air like buzzing bees, and the sound seemed deafening. He could see the loudest group of people standing in a giant clump next to a row of lockers, and knew to avoid them at all costs. Merlin took out the piece of paper in his pocket, on which was written his locker number and where his tutor room was.

He walked along until he came to the laughing group, and then skirted carefully around them. He thought himself clever until he looked once again at the rows of lockers, and realised that his one had to be in the middle of where those people were standing.

And so he squared his shoulders, and cut straight through the middle of them.

"'Scuse me, I need to get to my locker," he said time and time again. Groans followed behind him, tinted with laughter and whispers. Merlin fought to keep his head high: not too difficult when he's taller than most of them. Finally - finally! - he reached the line of grey lockers. A small achievement, but he clutched the hint of pride to his chest.

Most of the students start to disperse, some glaring a little at him. Maybe he could have been more polite and tried to make more friends... No, if he started beating himself up about everything he'd done so far today, he'd be there forever.

And there was one minor problem left to deal with. Two people, a boy and a girl, were lingering at his destination. They didn't seem to have any intention of moving, either.

She had glossy black hair, tied up in an elegant bun with messy tendrils framing her warm dark skin. She was considerably shorter than both Merlin and the boy next to her, and her face was certainly not unkind. She was standing effortlessly cool and still, with the only movement being her thumb moving across her phone and her mouth chewing bubblegum.

But the boy... He was very Mr Football-Team-Popular-Bro-No-Homo. He had tousled blonde hair that swept across his face, tan skin, and strong broad shoulders. He was powerfully built for his age, and was perhaps an inch or so taller than Merlin. He leant against a locker with closed eyes and music blaring from headphones buried in his ears. His arms were crossed in front of him, and the thought of approaching him seemed an impossible task.

He had no choice though.

"Can I...?"

He directed the words at the kinder-looking girl with a nod towards the locker, and hoped she'd understand.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure."

She moved to the right to make way for Merlin, who realised with a sinking feeling in his chest that the locker he needed was the very one that the guy was leaning against.

"Uh..."

Luckily, the girl came to his rescue.

"Arthur? Come on, he needs to get to his locker," she addressed the boy, whom Merlin assumed was called Arthur.

Arthur slowly opened his eyes. They were a thick heavy brown, and they looked at Merlin... With such disdain that it made his stomach flip. They looked him up and down, and seemed to be judging him. They were like bitter coffee, that shocked and repulsed the body with manufactured energy; no milk or sugar, just liquid caffeine.

Merlin felt like a bolt of electricity had run through him. He was glued to the spot, as Arthur continued to assess whether he was worthy of the time it would take for him to move out of the way. Merlin held his breath, waiting for the punch or the insult that was surely, inevitably, definitely on it's way...

But Arthur just sighed as if he had better things to do and shoved past him, sending the bag drooping on Merlin's shoulders flying round to hit his back. Arthur stalked away, and Merlin remained frozen

"Sorry about him, he can be a bit of a prick. I'm Gwen, by the way. Are you new this year? I don't remember seeing you around before."

"Yeah, this is my first day. I'm Merlin."

"Nice to meet you, Merlin. Right, I should probably get to tutor - and so should you, in fact."

-

**Meeting #2: Spilt pages ******

Merlin had been at this school for roughly a month now. He just about knew where his classes were and who was in them. He didn't really have any friends, but that didn't bother him. In most classes, he was comfortably invisible.

Except most of that changed one day when he accidentally left his Geography book in his class, and was forced to double back to collect it.

He was walking down the Humanities corridor, absently thinking about what he was going to do when he got home, when suddenly he could hear footsteps and laughter behind him. He tried to resist the paranoia threatening to take over his body. He didn't recognise the laughter, he didn't know the people who were the source of it, and so he couldn't be the subject of the joke.

But the jeers only got louder and the footsteps only got closer. Merlin estimated that there were between 5 and 10 people behind him, and chances were that at least most of the people yelling in his direction were male.

"Hey! Princess Big-Ears!"

The shrieks of hyena laughter intensified, and seemed to be directly inside Merlin's head as well as all around him. He didn't like his ears, never had. And it was an incredibly odd insult for someone to randomly start yelling at him.

But he couldn't resist it. He turned around and looked his verbal attackers directly in the eyes.

7 guys, all in his year group, all stopping walking as he stopped as he turned and looked. He recognised none except - there. Bitter brown eyes and a frown. Arthur, the judgey guy labelled a prick even by his friend. His eyes didn't look any kinder than they had a month ago. He wasn't laughing with his friends, though. He just stood around at the end of the laughing line, looking cool and frankly indifferent.

Merlin just rolled his eyes. He didn't have time for this; lunch would be over soon.

"Fuck you," he sighed and murmured under his breath. Really, from a metre or two they shouldn't have been able to hear, especially over the sound of their laughter. But the laughter died on their lips, and they all looked at him.

"What did you say?" Growled one of them. It was like something from one of those comedy non-action films, or a cartoon. Seven vs one. Seven angry thugs vs one plucky hero - who inevitably gets the shit kicked out of him.

Merlin should have just walked away, gone to his Geography classroom and stayed there. But where was the fun in that?

"I said, fuck you. I said that you should fuck off and go pick on someone else. I also said I really don't have time for your pathetic insults," Merlin's heart was beating too fast to be healthy, and he was ashamed of the stutter in his words, but he was fairly certain he got the point across.

As a group they were surprisingly well organised. Two rushed forward and tackled Merlin, holding him to the floor. One pulled his bag of off him and tipped his things around him. One more started to rip the pages out of the scattered books. Arthur and the boy who had growled the initial threat at Merlin just stood, watching.

They all must have been aware of the consequences of actually beating Merlin and leaving marks, as they just held him down and laughed once more. Clearly punishing him properly for telling them to fuck off wasn't worth the multiple detentions they would receive.

Once they were done, they stood up as one and moved away like a pack of parasites, communicating through high-fives and whistles.

Merlin looked down at the mess and sighed. He'd be lying if he said that this was the first time something like this had happened to him. With quiet thought, he settled down trying to sort his things into two piles: salvageable and not salvageable. Most of his exercise books had to go (though he thanked God he'd left his expensive Geography textbook behind), and some of his pens and pencils were snapped, but the damage could have been worse.

"Woah, are you okay dude? I heard all of the noise. What happened?"

Merlin looked up to see a boy that he vaguely recognised as being in the year above him. He was kind of short, with shoulder-length curly brown hair.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just had a nice chat with some of the less-nice guys in my year."

"Ah, okay. Well, let me help you pack everything up. I'm Gwaine, who are you?"

Gwaine knelt down and stretched out his hand to Merlin, who shook it before going back to re packing his bag.

"I'm Merlin."

"That's a cool name. Hey, are you really a wizard?"

Merlin had heard that joke a thousand times, but played along even so.

"Yep. I can fly and make potions and I have a magic wand and if I wanted to right now, I could turn you into a frog."

"Really?"

"Nah - if I could do magic, do you really think I'd be packing this bag by hand?"

"Fair point. You might just be in hiding, though."

"Maybe everyone's just a secret wizard in hiding, and no one's told each other."

"I'm not."

"... Maybe everyone except you is just a secret wizard in hiding, and no one's told each other."

Gwaine laughed, and started to flick through the remains of Merlin's Chemistry exercise book.

"You like Chemistry, huh?"

"I like Science in general. Perhaps it's my own version of magic."

"Aw, that's cool. Hey, me and some friends and Mr Lewis run a Science Club every Tuesday, where we sit in his Science classroom and talk about nerdy stuff - you should come along!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, totally!... Did we just become best friends?"

"I think so. Everyone needs someone that they can talk to about secret wizards."

-

**Meeting #3: The words that shouldn't be insults**

Merlin and Gwaine were pretty much best friends now. It was three months since Merlin first joined the school, and two months since they first met. They were regular attendees of the informal Science Club, and Merlin suddenly had people to stand with at break and sit with at lunch.

He stopped fearing an attack from those boys in his year. They mostly left him alone, and he had assurances from Gwaine and other people that he wouldn't be alone in fighting them. The threat still lingered in the back of his mind, but he was getting good at ignoring it.

But when they did decide they wanted to hurt someone, it wasn't Merlin that they came for.

It was one fine Tuesday afternoon in cool December. Gwaine and Merlin were coming out of the Science block, talking about something or other.

"Hold up!" Gwaine suddenly said, stopping in the middle of the courtyard.

"What is it?" Merlin asked, used by now to Gwaine's sudden epiphanies and realisations.

"... I forgot my Maths homework."

"Where is it?"

"In my locker. Can we go and get it quickly? It's due tomorrow and I haven't done it yet."

"Sure," Merlin shrugged. It wouldn't take that long.

They walked upstairs to Gwaine's locker in a comfortable silence. Merlin was just about to comment on how unfit and therefore out of breath he was, when he became aware of sounds coming from down the hall. Sounds of scratching, - the kind a pencil makes on metal or wood - of squeaking, - the kind a whiteboard pen makes - of giggling, and of shushing.

Bad sounds to be hearing.

As they neared the start of the lockers, the source of the sounds was clearly visible. Students, about five of them, clustered around a locker with heads bent down and pens in their hands. Merlin might not have thought too much of it, except-

"Merlin, that's my locker."

Shit.

"Merlin, what do we do?"

Fuck.

"Merlin-"

"Follow my lead, okay?"

And so they walked down the hall towards Gwaine's locker. Merlin didn't need to glance at his friend to know how he'd be looking and feeling. He was shaking a little, but he seemed almost... Resigned? As though this had happened before.

They kept on walking, Merlin trying to quickly formulate his plan.

"My friend would like to get to his locker," he said sharply when they reached their destination. The people looked at them and sniggered, but bowed sarcastically and moved to either side to form a path.

You can probably imagine what had been drawn and written on the locker. 'Faggot' 'Queer' 'Gay' were among twenty or so different types of profanity scrawled across the grey surface, along with several eerily accurate depictions of male body parts.

The laughter increased the closer they got to the locker.

"Unlock it and get your homework," Merlin whispered to Gwaine, before turning back to look at the perpetrators.

A few were in Gwaine's year, and so Merlin didn't know them. A few he recognised; Morgana, Morgause, Mordred. And of course, as there always seemed to be, Arthur was among them. He was the only one not holding a guilty pen, and those bitter coffee eyes of his seemed almost bored. But Merlin glared at all of them the same.

"I think it would be a good idea if you all got out of here," he said in a low voice that shook a little. He was still struggling with confrontation. But he was getting better at it.

To his surprise, they did eventually leave, leaving the violent sound of laughter ringing in Merlin's ears.

Merlin joined Gwaine in looking at the graffitied locker.

"Are you okay?" Merlin asked quietly after a few seconds.

"Yeah," said Gwaine in a voice that seemed hollowly calm.

"Do you want me to help you wash it off?"

"Nah, the cleaners'll do it overnight. We should be getting home now.

Gwaine took a few deep breaths, and started walking away. Merlin hastened to catch up, and prepared to ask the question on his mind.

"Gwaine... If you don't mind me asking... And you totally don't have to answer..."

"Merlin, just spit it out. I know what you're going to ask, anyway."

"Are you gay?"

"No, I'm pansexual. They just keep writing stuff like that on my locker because of something that happened a while back."

"Wait, they've done this before?! Gwaine we have to tell someone!"

Gwaine stopped Merlin by the arm.

"No. We can't tell anyone, okay? If I don't give them the satisfaction of knowing they've gotten to me, then they'll stop. Eventually."

"But Gwaine-"

"I want you to promise me you won't say anything."

"But I-"

"Merlin, promise."

"Fine. I promise I won't say anything. But you have to tell me if it happens again!"

"Deal."

 

And that was the moment that Merlin decided, once and for all, that he hated Arthur Pendragon.


End file.
